Things Newly Enshittified

[Irrev-Black]

Take a P.T. Barnum style come-on, for a wondrous event.

Get it scripted by definitely-artificial nothing-like-intelligence.

Hire day-labour actors (who may not have been paid).

Initiate, and bugger off, sharpishly and anonymously, with the funds.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-s ... .html#more

[joele]

Nintendo coming after yuzu (Nintendo switch emulator) as under the DMCA you are not allowed to play Nintendo games on non Nintendo hardware.

Legal emulation or no, Yuzu may not want to risk finding out in a court of law. Many small bands of developers have axed their projects after being approached by Nintendo, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Yuzu settled. “I’d say the claim here is enough to get a reasonable emulator company to cease, desist, and settle claims,” says Hoeg. “But remember that this is only one side of the story at present.”

The stupid thing is yuzu is totally free and open source, its a stretch to call it an "emulator company". Thousands of people are already downloading the source and/or forking the project.. Even if Nintendo win the case it won't make one iota of difference, it is way too late.

I see the problem for Nintendo but too bad, they're crazy thinking they can stop an open source project by suing the individuals that contributed to it.

And Yuzu is gone (switch emulator) also Citra the 3ds emulator (same people) has been taken offline in the settlement agreement with nintendo.. Both gone and $2 million odd in damages (for allowing people to play 3ds and switch games on a PC).

The interesting thing for me is neither yuzu or citra assisted you to pirate games, they simply allowed you to play games that are either pirated or backed up from your own hacked switch. The later also being a legal grey area as using your device in a way the manufacturer didn't specify is a no no.

[joele]

And as I suspected a fork of yuzu has shown up already called suyu.. According to the about page it is pronounced "sue you".

[Irrev-Black]

Or "further enshittified"...

ast year Google brought its new obsession with AI-powered chatbots to Google Search with the launch of the "Search Generative Experience," or "SGE." If you opted in, SGE intercepted your Google search queries and put a giant, screen-filling generative AI chatbot response at the top of your search results. The usual 10 blue links were still there, but you had to scroll past Google's ChatGPT clone to see them. That design choice makes outgoing web links seem like a legacy escape hatch for when the chatbot doesn't work, and Google wants to know why more people haven't opted in to this.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land reports that Google is going to start pushing SGE out to some users, even if they haven't opted in to the "Labs experiment." A Google spokesperson told the site SGE will be turned on for a "subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US." The report says "Google told us they want to get feedback from searchers who have not opted into SGE specifically. This way they can get feedback and learn how a more general population will find this technology helpful."

Citing his conversation with Google, Schwartz says some users automatically see Chatbot results for queries where Google thinks a chatbot "can be especially helpful." Google will turn on the feature for "queries that are often more complex or involve questions where it may be helpful to get information from a range of web pages—like 'how do I get marks off painted walls.'"

I don't think anyone has spotted one of these non-opt-in SGE pages in the wild yet, so it's unclear what the presentation will be. As an opt-in, SGE has a huge explanation page of how your search results will change. The chatbot is easily Google Search's biggest format change ever, and having that happen automatically would be awfully confusing!

It's also unclear if you can opt out of this. Today SGE is not compatible with Firefox, so that might be one way to skip Google's AI obsession for now. Google Search has recently undergone a big leadership shuffle, with Liz Reid taking over as the new head of Search. Reid previously led—wait for it—the SGE team, so the prevailing theory is that we're going to get way more AI stuff in search going forward.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03 ... ome-users/

[stylofone]

A cloud hosting platform changes its terms of service to say that anything you put there, THEY NOW OWN and can do anything they want with it FOREVER. Apparently it's retrospective, I read one user couldn't access their content to back it up without agreeing. Held hostage.

I read another comment saying it's no different to the TOS for posting stuff to facebook or whatever, but it's a new low for hosting services as opposed to demonic social media.

2024-03-27 12-28-41 1.png.jpg (190.12 KiB) Viewed 1747 times

[stylofone]

High tech products break sooner than old-fashioned ones.

The tech oligarchs like to trumpet the supposed virtue of "innovation". But it's actually reducing quality. I am going to do a bit of research and see if there is a broader movement for open source, modular repairable domestic appliances. I know there has been a movement for a mobile phone of this nature, and even an open source car platform, although neither of them has really taken off AFAIK. It's one of those things that needs a collective effort, which would normally mean a government promotion/regulation/subsidy regime, but governments are also wedded to economic growth and business interests, so it's not happening.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/modern-house ... 45822.html

[Irrev-Black]

Pushy AI? Dealbreaker for me.


https://kolektiva.social/deck/@sos@mast ... 1951562699

sos@mastodon.gamedev.place
Sos Sosowski
@sos@mastodon.gamedev.place

So, Microsoft is silently installing Copilot onto Windows Server 2022 systems and this is a disaster.

How can you push a tool that siphons data to a third party onto a security-critical system?

What privileges does it have upon install? Who thought this is a good idea? And most importantly, who needs this?

[Irrev-Black]

Not "newly-enshittified", per se, as the poo is well-encrusted on the bowl where Google Search went down the gurgler, but here's the history of how it happened.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

[stylofone]

The convergence of multiple enshittifications: google search, AI fake news, surveillance capitalism and clickbait for advertising. Mix them all in a virtual pot and you have "obit piracy", where people mentioned in trending topics are "killed" by AI, to generate engagement and advertising revenue.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-27/ ... /103633058

[Irrev-Black]

Reddit can get fucked.

OpenAI has struck a deal with Reddit to use content from the social media platform for its artificial intelligence chatbot, sending shares in the company up as much as 15 per cent in after-hours trading.

Thursday’s announcement (Friday NZT) is the latest in a number of deals between the Microsoft-backed start-up and media brands as the competition for high-quality and reliable data to underpin powerful new AI models intensifies. At the same time, OpenAI is fighting copyright lawsuits from publishers who are reluctant to allow their content to be used by the ChatGPT-maker.

The agreement gives OpenAI access to content on Reddit’s website and will allow the social media platform to embed more AI tools.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but a jump in Reddit’s stock would mean a windfall for Sam Altman, the co-founder and chief executive of OpenAI, who has invested tens of millions of dollars into the social media group.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/red ... BI6KZZ73Q/